LONDON — Maggie Steffens tried to take a pregame nap in her Olympic Village room Thursday afternoon only to keep waking up.

"I just kept going over every different scenario in the game in my head," a star defender on the U.S. women's water polo team, said. "What if we're down in the fourth quarter? What if we're up? What if we're down by five?"

In her tossing and turning Steffens, 19, forgot to cover one critical scenario: What to do if the U.S. women won their first Olympic gold medal in water polo?

So Steffens found herself scrambling around the pool deck after Team USA rolled over Spain, 8-5, in the Olympic Games final at the Water Polo Arena on Thursday night. Steffens scored five goals, none bigger than a fourth-quarter score that came on the heels of U.S. goalkeeper Betsey Armstrong stopping a Spain penalty shot.

"I had no idea what was going on," Steffens said of a postgame celebration that started with U.S. coach Adam Krikorian jumping into the pool and ended up going every which way around the arena.

"Somebody give me a flag!" Steffens yelled at no one in particular.

A half-hour later, the American flag was raised atop the highest flag pole at the medal ceremony, completing a 12-year odyssey marked by promise and Olympic disappointment and a particularly rough four years since the team lost in the 2008 Olympic final in Beijing.

Along the way the U.S. survived a player revolt against Krikorian in 2009 and crisis of confidence after a finishing sixth in last year's World Championships in Shanghai.

That the U.S. stood atop the medal stand in London less than a year later was testament to the team's resiliency, the tightness of the bond it forged in the post-Shanghai fallout, and the play of Steffens, the hottest hand in the Olympic tournament.

"This feels pretty good," Armstrong said. "This feels like everything had a reason. It's been a long four years since Beijing. We've had personnel changes, coaching changes but we made it through all of it. And this is perfect."

The Olympic journey had been even longer — and trying-— for U.S. captain Brenda Villa and attacker Heather Petri. Both were part of a U.S. team that was on the losing end in 2000's controversial inaugural Olympic women's final.

Four years later, they were on the U.S. team that left Athens with the bronze medal, then went through further heartbreak in Beijing.

It was after the U.S. won the 2009 World Championships that Villa considered retirement, worn down by the divisive environment during Krikorian's first season as coach.

"Certainly in 2009 there was a bit of disarray," Krikorian said.

A series of soul-searching meetings as well personnel changes on both the player roster and coaching staff eased tensions.

But the disappointment at the 2011 World Championships showed there was still work to do. Emotions, frustrations and complaints were laid open on the table during a team meeting. Villa and Petri also talked about the disappointment of past Olympic Games.

"We came together after we lost in Shanghai in the quarterfinals," Villa said. "It was just a matter of us expressing our true feelings, making ourselves vulnerable. It was a real moment for our team to come together. If you're going to be a team you have to be able to look each other in the eye."

Maureen O'Toole, a member of the 2000 Olympic team, was Steffens' first coach, and when Villa and Petri talked about the near Olympic misses of the past and the opportunity London presented to current team, it hit home with Steffens.

"It made me realize we're not playing for ourselves," Steffens said. "We're playing for each other."

Steffens, then 15, was in the stands in Beijing to watch her older sister, Jessica, a defender, and Team USA in the 2008 Olympic final. Less than a year, later Krikorian called Maggie up to the national team. On the first possession of her first game with the U.S., against Australia, Steffens took an elbow to the face that caused a bloody nose.

"She goes 'OK, I want to go back in,'" Krikorian said recalling the incident. "She doesn't back down to anyone."

Steffens led the Olympic tournament in scoring with 21 goals and her shooting percentage (77.8) was more than double for that of the tournament's second-leading scorer Ma Huanhuan of China.

"I knew that eventually she would be a player at this level it was just a matter of when," Jessica Steffens said of her sister after they were awarded their gold medals.

Steffens deferred entrance into Stanford a year so she could train with Team USA on a daily basis in Los Alamitos. Her early arrival on the global stage certainly didn't surprise Krikorian.

"When we brought her in, in 2009 as a 16-year-old kid, to be honest I had this vision for her," he said. "This wasn't a surprise on my part. Maybe it was for the rest of the world."

Krikorian, however, stopped short, barely, of anointing Steffens the best player on the planet.

"I would say she was the best player in the world in this tournament," he said.

If there had been any debate Steffens settled the matter in the biggest game of her young life. She scored three goals as part of a stretch where the U.S. hammered in six unanswered goals, Villa ending the run by putting the Americans up 7-2 with 4:05 left in the third period. But Steffens biggest goal of the game came only moments after Armstrong stopped Jennifer Pareja's penalty shot with 7:34 remaining in the game. "Betsey was just a wall today," Steffens of Armstrong, who produced a series of world class saves and blocks.

"Betsy's huge save and then Maggie's goal right after that, that was a pivotal point of the game," Krikorian said.

While Spain scored three goals late, the normally ultra-focused Villa snuck a peak at the clock late in the game and thought "There's no way we're going to give this away."

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